I spoke to the customer service person on the phone. Gave him my opinion of this decision but he was a talking robot “30% trade-in, legacy issues, new technology, etc.”. Complete BS. I have been an early adopter and a loyal Sonos advocate. As most on here have stated having $1000’s of dollars invested in this system that will be obsolete after the first update in May.
Sonos - either do better or your product will no longer sell as most who use your system will find other, cheaper products.
This is one of the worst customer friendly decisions I have seen in a long time.
patbia!The residual sales and value of sonos products has just gone completely up in smoke Im afraid!Who in their right mind is going to pay out on a system that wont work in possibly 6 months time?Sell if you can and your punter hasnt read the “legacy” bombshell!I personally couldnt sell to a somebody unaware of the sonos service I couldnt sleep at night!Sonos hopefully will rectify this bollocks or be the masters of their own demise! Outrageous way for a company to behave!
This is a TERRIBLE way to treat loyal customers. Making multi-£$€1000 systems obsolete will be a disaster for the company. Don’t talk about technical obsolescence by calling perfectly good working equipment “legacy” - what an insult, Aldo an admission of failure on your part. Also you have just killed the resale value of our equipment - until recently residual value was much higher than 30%!
Now, I have spotted the lie inherent in the announcement. Recently it was possible to add an Airplay2 device (such as a One) to an older Sonos setup, which would then make it possible to feed the ENTIRE system via Airplay2. The conclusion is that only one device needs to have the new features in order for the whole system to work - all that is happening is that a digital stream is being sent to the other devices over the mesh wifi (or cat 5), and decided in those devices. The peripheral devices don’t need the new features, so there is no issue with their hardware capability. Sonos can solve this quickly and cheaply for all of us, and save their company, by producing a host device (doesn’t even need to have any audio) with the new features to keep an existing multi room setup working indefinitely. Come on Sonos, DO THE RIGHT THING.
patbia!The residual sales and value of sonos products has just gone completely up in smoke Im afraid!Who in their right mind is going to pay out on a system that wont work in possibly 6 months time?Sell if you can and your punter hasnt read the “legacy” bombshell!I personally couldnt sell to a somebody unaware of the sonos service I couldnt sleep at night!Sonos hopefully will rectify this bollocks or be the masters of their own demise! Outrageous way for a company to behave!
I have 17 components on my account that are now listed as legacy (I have supported installations for friends, I think 10 of those components are in my house).
I cannot in good conscience dump this equipment on unsuspecting people. I hope that one of two things happen, either Sonos reverses course and allows “legacy” and “modern” components to coexist or that a community of developers take up the development of an alternative OS. I have asked in a previous post that if Sonos is no longer going to support these components that they release the code base so that it could be used for non-commercial purposes. I am sure that there would be a community happy to support the continued development.
With this announcement, it should be clear to anyone that there is no reason to buy any Sonos product that has a speaker or an amplifier in it, because they may become prematurely obsolete. The only product that makes any sense at all is the “Port”, to which you can connect your own amplifier and speaker. And even then, the price point for the Port is quite high for a product that may be obsolete in a few years.
Owner of over 20 Sonos products.
Ill give another view of this debacle since everyone else has pretty much detailed most of it.
Over the last 5 years I have lost the following features with new updates
PC software to set Sonos Settings (One speaker is at an isolated site with no wifi, hence no android connection)
Web based info queries without adding to app
Nice wireless charging tablets to use as interfaces now told android OS not supported.
Direct Android connection to speaker not wifi (Poolhouse doesn't have good wifi but does have good SonosNet connection) now my Android tablet at location needs to find wifi, just have to walk back towards house how convenient.
Pandora sort by date??? I know its their issue but again with all the “new” updates I lose functionality
Features would love to see added in the new updates never happening
Advanced grouping (with 20 speakers a useful tool)
Trueplay tuning (Android house)
New option for media library (65K limit) yes I use Plex some but response isn't great when you have lots of albums, local folder from Sonos media library helps because I can separate by folders to make filtering easier)
Home Theatre Audio, too many to even list.
SMBv2
Multiple Amp station hardware (instead of four/eight in a whole house installation) one nice unit combined would be a winner.
With all the “new” updates I really haven't gotten any new features that I need or desire. I have lost quite a few of what made Sonos awesome!
So True !
Sonos you are chasing the new market for customers that buy one maybe two products. Competing with Amazon, Google, and Apple which have much higher volumes and can beat you at that game. Younger customers that only care about a cheap price and not quality.
All the while angering customers who invest in you as an eco system. I feel like you are the best in class for that. Still are. Problem is you are chasing a market where you wont win and killing the market where you did. Where you have name brand reputation.
In a world where people “like” a speaker the size of bagel, Bluetooth connection is deemed good enough, talking to your speaker is more important than the sound, and price is a factor you aren't on the right track.
Dont lose your multi device customers!
This reminds me of the turn Radio shack took and thought competing with mobile phone stores was a good idea and didn’t focus on the part of the business what made them unique.
As a Marketing Manager, and student of one of the global top 3 business schools, I KNOW this decision from SONOS will go down in Business School history as one of the best examples of brand suicide. Complete idiots. SONOS had such a great concept but have repeatedly demonstrated difficulty in delivering the seemless experience we expect these days, with problematic networking and poor controller clients both on desktop and mobile. It’s like they had a super developer for the initial concept and then went cheap on engineers thereafter.
Your only way out now is to maintain for ever after two software models, 1. one that allows all devices on a mixed ‘old’ and new system to continue being maintained and debugged, as a complete system, 2. one where we can chose to run two parallel networks where the ‘modern’ kit can operate all new features, the old devices continue to operate and be bug fixed, and the two networks allow two way music play and functionality upto the limit of every device.
Of course there is another option: much higher (like 90%) discounts on a replacement kit.
Now THAT would have attracted enormous kudos and customers who would have felt reassured that obsolescence would be a minimal threat. It would still cover manufacturing costs, but retained customers and attracted great media support as well as new customers.
I am now going to go back to the drawing board that I last looked at when I bought my SONOS speaker, and see how I have a networked music system at home without using any SONOS devices - if I succeed I will sell my SONOS kit and never buy from SONOS again. I expect my HiFi to last forever, like the Arcam seperates and 55 yr old valve Telefunken radio amp still going strong.
SONOS, you’re a barrel of crap!
Well said, especially in regards to the problematic networking and poor controller clients both on desktop and mobile.
The clever thing would be for them to redesign the way that the software and applications function rather - it’s entirely possible to do more with less.
It’s just easier for them to keep this same overly complex resource taxing system that does not meet user needs and make hardware obsolete.
Who is at the wheel of Sonos? Sounds like a bloody fool. When proposed with those two options,
- Redesign the Sonos architechture from the ground up to create a better user experience, ensure that Sonos speakers do not become obsolete, and give more FLEXABILITY to the whole platform in the way that people connect and stream music and audio.
- Continue on business as usual and make a whole heap of speakers obsolete, create some landfill, piss our customer base off, ruin the brand reputation and cause individuals stress and necessitate wasted financial resources
Any intelligent person with decent values would choose to make the hardware buy it for life and adapt the software. What I have to say to this individual, or group of individuals: WE STREAM MUSIC MATE, WE DONT RUN AN INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION.
So in December I added a sonos one to my other 3 sonos devices. And now I find that this new 1 month old device will no longer receive any updates after May unless I remove 50% of my existing devices. How can this be legal let alone ethical?
they can keep there 30% discount I would like to receive a 100% refund on the compromised product they sold me a month ago with no warning of their intention to severely restrict it’s inter-operability and upgrade path.
With this announcement, it should be clear to anyone that there is no reason to buy any Sonos product that has a speaker or an amplifier in it, because they may become prematurely obsolete. The only product that makes any sense at all is the “Port”, to which you can connect your own amplifier and speaker. And even then, the price point for the Port is quite high for a product that may be obsolete in a few years.
But… the ZP80 is being rendered obsolete and it’s no different to the port. It has cat 5 and if you really wanted to you could get an ethernet to wireless n adapter for it.
There’s a new message posted from Patrick today that will help answer many of the questions we’ve seen. You can see it above in the top post, or on our blog here ‘A Letter from our CEO’.
If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate with asking.
To Sonos customers: SONOS is having its quarterly earnings call on Feb 5, 2020 and will have a Q&A sesssion we can all dial into. I encourage all upset customers/shareholders to dial into this call and discuss their concerns with the CEO. The stock analysts that cover SONOS will be on this call. If the shareholders who actually SONOS hear how upset the customer base is we can get SONOS to reverse this decision. Call in information is below. Please feel free to repost!
Feb 5, 2020
5pm (eastern time)
calling from US - (833) 236-2748, with conference ID 9666837.
calling outside US dial (647) 689-4173, with the same conference ID.
PLEASE REPOST THIS. MAYBE IF THE PEOPLE WHO BUY SONOS’s STOCK HEAR HOW SONOS JUST PISSED OFF THEIR CUSTOMER BASE SONOS WILL REVERSE THIS DECISION.
We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state.
This isn’t what we want. You’re still not understanding. We want modern and legacy to work together. I have invested time and money over the years, now I have to manage 2 systems? Absurd. If the legacy doesn’t support new features then fine, but we should be able to stream/group/etc… to both new and old without splitting out the system.
just got this email:
We heard you. We did not get this right from the start. My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward:
First, rest assured that come May, when we end new software updates for our legacy products, they will continue to work just as they do today. We are not bricking them, we are not forcing them into obsolescence, and we are not taking anything away. Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honor that investment for as long as possible. While legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.
Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalizing details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.
While we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the trade up program we launched for our loyal customers.
Thank you for being a Sonos customer. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I hope that you’ll forgive our misstep, and let us earn back your trust. Without you, Sonos wouldn't exist and we’ll work harder than ever to earn your loyalty every single day.
If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Have I got this right? Sonos answer to making my 4 year old speaker obsolete is to ask me to buy more product from you?
You must think we are stupid.
I have also spent many thousands of dollars on Sonos products and have enjoyed them greatly. They are made well and seem as though they will last a long time. I get that one wants to advance their integrated product line, but I also am less likely to expand my system using Sonos anymore. All of the “trade up” offers and changes that have made my system less functional have destroyed some of my loyalty and trust.
Youtubers are picking up this story and this forum is being echoed.
Please continue to engage social medias.
I am a very early adopter (16 years) and own a dozen Sonos amps in two homes potentially bricked by this move. While I have a sympathetic view of the business case here for Sonos than most posters, the approach here was backwards, and the communication plan flat out bizarre.
I totally understand the desire to cease supporting these products, although it seems to me the window here was too short for $500 items. Whenever support ceases, if streaming services and third party apps cease working in the Sonos app, so be it, perhaps the stream can be cast from the underlying App, or maybe Pandora/Spotify will step in to allow their apps to control the legacy Sonos devices. Obviously new versions of Windows won’t run on 15 year old PCs, and new phone apps often don’t work on even 6-7 year-old hardware. We experience that all of the time. But you need to maintain a least common denominator of software that remains safe, interoperable with new and old devices, and it available for third parties to program to. Frankly, little in your software updates over the past 16 years have been of any use to me beyond integrating streaming services. I wish I could still use my old controllers whose battery lasted a week. If I can continuing using what I have, and seamlessly replace any broken equipment as needed (which has amounted to just one amp in 16 years), I could not care less if you add new features to the software.
Just got an email from Sonos and CEO Patrick Spence.
Looks like they are taking action on the issue of updates in May.
Whatever the solution, thank you Sonos for acknowledging the issue and working on it!
Best hardware streaming media system as always and happy to hear you are looking into our concerns!
My initial reaction was much like many others but actually this probably was inevitable at some point and all competitors are likely to face a similar problem.
The miscalculation is to offer a measly 30% which effectively is no discount at all bearing in mind some of the reductions available elsewhere.
For me it was mostly the mafia method used: first an offer to buy more before prices would increase. Then, when not reacting, an offer to trade in existing products for new ones. When not reacting on that either, then a letter stating that “now you give us some money within 4 months, or else...”
Any kind of reseller who decides to threat and blackmail their customers do not deserve to have any.
Besides: I really cannot find any advantages in the new products compared to the old ones. If Sonos wants me to buy something, they must offer me something that I need or otherwise want, and for a price that I find appropriate for what I will get.
The one advantage - “or else...” - is not a real one as it is fully up to Sonos to plan which software updates they want to provide.
As I do not expect electronics products to last forever, I would in fact have accepted - fully and no questions asked - a product retirement plan that was stretching sufficiently far ahead to allow for the planning of buying the needed product replacements. 4 months is absurd, 2 years would be more reasonable.
Why would I spend a fortune investing in the Sonos hardware ecosystem and then they send an incredible mail that my speakers could be useless after May?
There’s a new message posted from Patrick today that will help answer many of the questions we’ve seen. You can see it above in the top post, or on our blog here ‘A Letter from our CEO’.
This letter, unfortunately, doesn’t clarify the concerns of those of us that are simply looking to understand that legacy systems/devices will be able to be streamed to from modern devices, even if this requires new hardware, much as Sonos is able to stream audio to “normal” speakers via a Port or similar.
I have to repeat as strongly as I can, If we cannot stream music between speakers in the network, regardless of their legacy status, then the original selling point and purpose of having invested in Sonos in the first place, is destroyed.
There’s a new message posted from Patrick today that will help answer many of the questions we’ve seen. You can see it above in the top post, or on our blog here ‘A Letter from our CEO’.
Wow that message from your CEO is just gonna wind people up even more.
Another slap in the face.
Wow. Bad decision. I am a loyal customer, and recommended you to more people than you know. SERIOUSLY?!? You are destroying brand loyalty. Come on! This is just a force to get people to buy new products, and this is worse than Apple...I will not, I would switch brands on principle.
Make me stay by being fair. I spent a lot of money with you.
Just got an email from Sonos and CEO Patrick Spence.
Looks like they are taking action on the issue of updates in May.
Whatever the solution, thank you Sonos for acknowledging the issue and working on it!
Best hardware streaming media system as always and happy to hear you are looking into our concerns!
That email stated that: “We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state.”
So, it means that nothing has changed. New products wont work with older products. These are speakers and any claim that there is a technology hurdle that prevent the older speakers from playing music with newer speakers is a lie.
There’s a new message posted from Patrick today that will help answer many of the questions we’ve seen. You can see it above in the top post, or on our blog here ‘A Letter from our CEO’.
Tell the CEO that older speakers need to work with newer speakers. Because, you know, these are speakers. The SONOS board needs to fire that guy
